It’s time for a new Nirvana

We’ve been lucky so far, we rock-n-roll fans. Every decade or so there’s a revolution, a new band (or family of bands) that comes along and changes everything.

From the Beatles and the Who to the Sex Pistols and the Clash to Nirvana—the history of rock is the history of rock’s revolution against itself.

When the Clash came along it was all Foreigner and REO Speedwagon. When Nirvana came along it was Michael Jackson and those prettified hair bands on MTV.

These days we have Britney Spears and boy bands and Eminem.

People my age, we did the Nirvana thing. It’s time for the next bunch of kids to do their thing. I have no doubt that it’s coming.

I just hope it’s really, really noisy. I’ll know you’re doing the right thing if my first instinct as an older person is to hate it.

By the way, I actually saw Nirvana perform live several times, at dorm parties and at house parties in Olympia in the late ’80s. And I couldn’t stand them. They weren’t really Nirvana yet—they were a boring heavy metal band. But, you know, they got really good later.